


Hey

by Imagine036



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, Soulmates AU, Theroy, idea from a tumblr post - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 10:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16741948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagine036/pseuds/Imagine036
Summary: In a world where the first thing your soulmate said to you was tattooed on your forearm, people thought up all kinds of creative, unique things to say when meeting someone for the first time. Some tattoos took up the whole length of the forearm; some even split into two lines. Roy’s was just one word.Hey.Probably one of the most offensive greetings you can get from your soulmate.





	Hey

**Author's Note:**

> Roy's backstory isn't quite the same as in the show, but I tried to keep the meeting relatively similar.
> 
> Link to the original Tumblr post, because the idea is what inspired this:  
> http://imagine036.tumblr.com/post/180490945712/you-know-what-bugs-me-about-soulmate-aus-so-im

Growing up in the Glades wasn’t easy on Roy Harper. Between his mother disappearing when he was six and his father turning to less savory means to make ends meet, it’s no wonder he turned out the way he did.

 

He was a bright kid underneath it all; his teachers all said so. They never quite gave up on thinking that Roy was the one they could save. He was the one who would get out, who would make something of himself.

 

And then he got arrested for shoplifting.

 

His English teacher was the one who bailed him out, all crossed arms and disappointed platitudes. How the cops knew to call him, Roy wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t in a place to be picky. His father was nowhere to be found. If he had been around, he likely wouldn’t have had the bail money anyways.

 

It wasn’t the last time Mr. Greenaway bailed him out, despite Roy’s refusal to call the man. He couldn’t be a burden to the man; mostly, he couldn’t handle the disappointment if, one day, Mr. Greenaway got tired of it all and stopped showing up when the cops called on Roy’s behalf.

 

“Think of your soulmate, Roy,” Mr. Greenaway appealed as they buckled in to the man’s 2005 Chevy one blustery November night. Roy had been taken in after a fight broke out with one of the local gang members who was trying to intimidate his neighbours into joining up. “What would they say if they could see you right now?”

 

Mr. Greenaway had no way of knowing this was a sore spot with Roy; it wasn’t considered appropriate to discuss your soulmate with teachers. Honestly, Roy was so shocked by the breach of propriety that he forgot to be offended at first. But then the words registered and the resentment resurfaced.

 

“She’d probably say ‘hey’,” Roy muttered, examining a tear in the fabric of the sun blocker.

 

“Don’t be glib.”

 

He wasn’t, but again, Mr. Greenaway had no way of knowing that. In a world where the first thing your soulmate said to you was tattooed on your forearm, people thought up all kinds of creative, unique things to say when meeting someone for the first time. Some tattoos took up the whole length of the forearm; some even split into two lines. Roy’s was just one word.

 

Hey.

 

Probably one of the most offensive greetings you can get from your soulmate. It used to be normal to say the first time you met someone, or at least that’s what the history books say. But after the soul tattoos started appearing, it slowly disappeared. After all, you can’t very well find your soulmate if your tattoo is the one word everyone says to you when you first meet.

 

Now, it was a kind of ‘screw you’ to the system. Those who rejected the idea of soulmates went around saying ‘hey’ to everyone they encountered on the street. The message was clear: I do not care about soulmates and I do not want one. Those with the ‘hey’ tattoos learned to accept their fate early on; it was better than holding out hope that you could change your soulmate’s mind.

 

“Screw soulmates.” Roy crossed his arms and stared resolutely out the window. Pity the only view was dilapidated buildings and homeless people huddled together against the wind.

 

“Roy, that’s not-”

 

He cut Mr. Greenaway off without thinking, “Soulmates don’t mean a damn thing. My parents were soulmates; didn’t stop my mom from walking out.”

 

“That may be, but don’t assume your soulmate will do the same. It’s not fair to either of you.”

 

The rest of the ride passed in silence, only broken when Roy hopped out of the truck and turned back to awkwardly thank his teacher for bailing him out. Despite his irritation with the soulmate discussion, he knew he owed Mr. Greenaway big time.

 

***

 

The dance continued, but Mr. Greenaway didn’t bring up the issue of soulmates again. He’d clearly gotten the message that Roy didn’t care about soulmates. Why would he, when his soulmate so clearly didn’t care about him?

 

His father had started outright disappearing for days at a time now, leaving Roy to fend for himself. With no income, stealing was the only way to eat. He’d gotten better at it over the years, though. He didn’t take from the store if he could help it; getting banned wouldn’t help him in the long run.

 

Instead, he stole money from the unsuspecting rich idiots who seemed to come to the Glades in droves. Some were there for a laugh, some were there to ‘learn a lesson’, and others were there because they were in a rebellious streak and were convinced their soulmate was a ‘bad boy’. It wasn’t really bad, the way Roy saw it. After all, they were so rich that they wouldn’t even miss the money he took.

 

When he first saw the two women walking side by side down Third Avenue, he didn’t think much of it beyond a roll of his eyes. No doubt they were here to ‘walk on the wild side’ and bring home someone to make Daddy cringe. He’d run low on cash a couple of days ago, and one had an expensive purse dangling from her fingers. There was no way he could pass that up.

 

It was a risk, running at them in broad daylight and flat out snatching the purse, but he didn’t have many other options. He didn’t want to wait for them to stop somewhere so he could carry out the theft with more finesse. It was now or never. Plus, a little cardio would do him good.

 

Mind made up, he flipped his red hood up and formulated a plan of attack. He still had the element of surprise, so he used it to his advantage with a slower, silent approach. He didn’t move quickly enough to alert them to his presence until he was within reach of snatching the purse, at which point he floored it and took off ahead of them.

 

“HEY!” A voice shrieked behind him. Despite his better judgement, he whipped his head around to see the girl whose purse he just snatched with her mouth still hanging open, eyes sparking. Dammit. Now they’d seen his face. Why did he have to look back?

 

His pause seemed to have encouraged them to pursue, yet another inconvenience he didn’t need. At this point, it was probably better to just drop the purse, but for some reason his body wouldn’t listen. Instead, he swerved left into an alley with the intention of losing them. As if enough hadn’t already gone wrong with what should have been a simple snatch-and-go, an eight foot fence greeted him in the middle of the alley. Of course. Hopefully Mr. Greenaway wasn’t on vacation…

They’d made it to the alley now, and the older one stepped forward with some lie about how they’d let him go if he gave the purse back. He scoffed at her just as his eye caught on the wall to his right. The dumpster was in just the right position… He’d only get one shot at it; he had to be sure.

 

It was one of his more spectacular moments, if he’d been keeping score (he secretly was). He vaulted over the fence more seamlessly than he’d anticipated and dropped to his feet on the other side with ease. Since they’d already seen his face, he turned back to revel in their utter shock for a moment before he sped away.

 

***

 

Too bad his crowning moment of physical prowess was all for nothing… He’d clearly underestimated the girl’s attachment to her purse, and it had landed him in an interrogation room yet again. This time, though, the cop who’d picked him up had taken him to headquarters instead of the precinct in the Glades. Of course; this one had connections and had to flaunt them.

 

The worst part was that he might have actually had to call Mr. Greenaway himself; these cops didn’t know about the unspoken arrangement. Luckily, the unfamiliar officers allowed him to inject enough sympathy into his backstory to pull on the girl’s heartstrings and get her to drop the charges. It wasn’t the first time he’d shamelessly used what was more or less the truth of his life to get out of a scrape with the law.

 

He figured he was scot-free after that. He went home, thought about who he should call to fence the purse, but ultimately decided to wait a few days. He told himself it was because he didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention, but a churning feeling in the pit of his stomach screamed that was a lie.

 

***

 

The knock at the door wasn’t completely unheard of, but the Harpers had so few visitors that it wasn’t exactly commonplace. Roy steeled himself for one of his father’s… associates, and was promptly shocked to see the girl standing on the other side. Thea Queen, he realized. His body reacted instantaneously, slamming the door in her face.

 

The smart thing would have been to walk away at that point. After all, what was she going to do? Break and enter?

 

For some ungodly reason, though, Roy found himself snapping through the door, “How’d you know where I live?”

 

The answering silence stretched on long enough to make him think she’d left, and for one fleeting moment, he felt almost… sad? He needed to get a grip. But then she spouted off something about Google and he opened the door against his better judgement. She somehow talked him into giving her the purse back, and the weird swooping in his gut pushed him to snark at her about believing every sad story she heard. All in all, it was a disaster.

 

Yet she somehow managed to appear again, offering him a job at her brother’s nightclub like he needed a hand-out from some rich kid. He wasn’t interested in being her charity case or a pit-stop on a rebellious tour. No matter how hard he pushed her away, she kept coming right back. He couldn’t figure it out, and part of him didn’t want to. The second he figured out how to get rid of her… well, she’d be gone.

 

In a vain attempt to counteract his weird desire to keep her around, he complained twice as loudly about her. It got to the point that he found himself complaining to Mr. Greenaway after class one day. To his credit, the older man listened patiently, as though it wasn’t far beyond the scope of his job description to listen to teenagers whine.

 

“What if she’s your soulmate?” The teacher finally asked, leaning back in his desk chair with a raised eyebrow. “It’s not unheard of for soulmates to feel inexplicably drawn to each other.”

 

Roy scoffed.

 

“I’m serious, Roy,” he prodded, leaning forward. “What was the first thing she said to you?”

 

The familiar resentment at the mention of soulmates bubbled to the surface. Roy opened his mouth to retort that there was absolutely no way Thea Queen was his soulmate, because the first thing she said to him— shouted at him, really, was…

 

The force of the realization hit him like a freight train. Forgetting Mr. Greenaway, Roy yanked up the sleeve of the red hoodie he always wore to conceal the shame of the three-letter tattoo.

 

Hey.

 

The breath whooshed from his lungs all at once. Mr. Greenaway, wrongly interpreting his shock as offense, tripped over his words as soon as he caught sight of the word.

 

“I’m sorry, Roy. I should never have-”

 

“No, no, you’re right!” Roy exclaimed. “It was the first thing she said to me. I have to go. Thanks!”

 

He figured she’d be at the club, and he was right. But when he got there, he realized he had no idea why he’d rushed over. In the moment, he’d been so sure, but now… ‘Hey’ was a common greeting for those who detested soulmates. What were the chances that her use of the word was the one meant for him? He was a criminal from the Glades and she was… Thea Queen. It was nothing more than a stupid coincidence.

 

Before he could make a fool of himself, he turned to head back home. He was as far as the end of the alley when she called out to him.

 

It took him a few tries to work up the nerve, but he eventually blurted out, “Why do you keep sticking around? I mean, I’ve made it pretty clear I don’t want your help, yet here you are.”

 

It was harsher than he meant it to be, but he couldn’t take the words back. Instead of shrinking away or turning on her heel to go, though, Thea’s eyes sparked, just as they had that day in the alley. She closed the distance between them and yanked up her sleeve. It was the first time he’d actually seen her forearm, he realized, as he glanced down at the tattoo scrawled there.

 

How’d you know where I live?

 

He blinked. Once, twice, three times before his lips stretched into a wide smile.

 

“I grew up thinking I was a stalker!” She admonished, smacking him on the shoulder.

 

He couldn’t help his natural retort, “Well, you kind of _did_ stalk me.”

 

Her jaw dropped in mock indignation and she smacked him again.

 

Roy laughed and flinched back before her words registered. “Wait, you’ve known since that first night?”

 

Her eyebrows pulled together. “You didn’t?”

 

He tilted his head, his brows furrowing as well. “Um, no?”

 

“How many people greet you by saying ‘Google’, Roy Harper?”

 

His stomach bottomed out. Oh crap. He was wrong. She was wrong. They weren’t soulmates. This was… He would never get over the mortification.

 

Except… No. He clearly remembered her shrieking after him that day and his inexplicable reaction to turn back to her. He hadn’t realized at the time, but his brain had recognized the word for what it was and responded in kind. He hadn’t made a mistake that day, as he’d previously assumed. He just hadn’t connected the dots.

 

He couldn’t help smirking as he rolled up his sleeve. “The first thing you said to me wasn’t ‘Google’.”

 

The crinkled-brow look was adorable on her. He couldn’t help the smirk from changing to a full smile as she studied the three letters on his arm; he sensed the gears turning as she tried to remember that day. Her jaw dropped and her breath huffed from between her lips the instant it fell into place.

 

“Huh. I did say that, didn’t I?” She laughed fully. “I guess I’m one of _those_ soulmates.”

 

“Yeah, it’s real funny.” There was no way she could miss the sarcasm that coated the words.

 

She bit her lip and took a small step into his space. “Well, just so we’re clear, I most definitely _do_ believe in soulmates.”

 

He couldn’t have stopped the grin spreading back across his face if he’d tried. Pretty soon his face would freeze like that.

 

“Are you going to kiss me or what?” Straight to the point, as always.

 

He was still grinning from ear to ear when he leaned in and captured her lips with his. Maybe soulmates weren’t so bad after all.


End file.
